Most people in my space sell capabilities. I solve the problem.

I build and run businesses, my own and other people’s, often with my own capital at risk. That’s where the judgment comes from.

For myself, I built a collectibles brand that beat its pricing targets by 32 percent, grew a failing retailer 650 percent in five years, and created an entertainment property that I sold to SpringHill.

I’ve brought those same instincts into other people’s companies: a six-year run with PepsiCo, the Seinfeld lookbook for KITH that generated more than three billion impressions, and, most recently, a brand I built from the ground up for Universal Music Publishing Group.

What you’re hiring is the judgment underneath all of it: how I decide when the situation is new and there’s no playbook to follow.

Here’s what I actually believe: advice is cheap when it isn’t your money. Every framework I bring you, I paid for first, in my own capital and my own losses. So I won’t hand you a strategy I wouldn’t fund myself, and I won’t gut the thing that made the business worth building in the first place. The margin is always right there for the taking, and taking it is usually the beginning of the end. If the plan is to squeeze it, you don’t need me.

I keep the slate small on purpose. A few partners a year.

Partners & ventures

PepsiCoKITHMajor League SoccerSpringHillUniversal Music Publishing GroupMagna OperaminiMCMCoat of ArmsThe Other Scene

Writing